Tues February 28th, 5.15pm, University of Leeds
Full Title: Dowsing Invisible Cities
Abstract:
Ben presents several projects he has worked on that attempt to reveal hidden aspects of city life. He will be talking about the ghosts of wasted heat, contrails of fashion choices, traces of acoustic detail, digital maps of playful crowds and music for forgotten buildings. The technologies he uses include CCTV computer vision, mechanical bubble machines, GPS apps, inflatables, hand soldered binaural microphones, openstreetmap data, building-sized displays, arduinos, laser-cut stencils, pocket-sized screens, digital projectors and hastily installed & poorly understood GIS software.

Venue: Baines Wing Miall Lecture Theatre 2.34, University of Leeds
Campus map of buildings: click on this link, then launch the interactive campus map, and choose Baines Wing from the list on the right.

From the main entrance, go straight on past the front desk, then through the doors on the left. Follow the corridor round to the right and then to the left. At the end of the corridor on your right take the lift to the second floor (West) or go up 5 short flights of stairs. The Miall Lecture Theatre (2.34) is straight opposite the lift.

Thanks to Tina Richardson for inviting me along to give a talk. The Leeds psychogeography talks are always a fun crowd.

output of a processing sketch

Here’s a couple of old face paint experiments following on from the clowns (I subscribe to the belief that halloween costumes should be scary). One borrows from my bunny project and a my little pony eye (steamer):

The other took inspiration from an illustrator whose work I once saw in a hairdressers in Kentish Town (any ideas who this might have been?) who had drawn giant-mouthed creatures.

The opening scene to The Dark Knight (2008) is the most recent clown gang I can think of.

Akira is the classic I measure all others against.

Akira’s Joker (ジョーカー) has a great upside down mouth in his early appearances.

The Warriors (1979) had two gangs that used face paint. The Hi-Hats were basically mimes.

The Baseball Furies, we’re a nice mash-up of New York Yankees and clown makeup.

Here’s the Furies in action.

The asymmetrical eye decoration of one of the Furies members is reminiscent of another face – young Alex from A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Here’s a gang fight from that film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssxMTb3puUs

If you’re seeking inspiration for face make-up for a clown gang of your own, all clowns registered with Clowns International produce a painted egg to register their unique face painting – seems like a joke but isn’t :)

this could be because: they are trying to do something clever around blocking third parties or in preparation for google tv or in terms of advertising; or because they are disorganised and have broken this core feature of a playlist; or because the button is there, but I can’t see it because of bad UI.

anyway, you can fix it with this firefox keyword bookmark:

location: javascript:void(location.href='http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p='+location.href.slice(location.href.lastIndexOf(%22/%22)+1,location.href.length))

keyword: playlist

or bookmarklet:
view play list

of course, as with all things youtube related, this fix will be redundant any time soon when google switches round all the functionality and code again.

Nearly all my flickr images are automatically available to use under a cc by-sa licence. You can see the details in the photo page by clicking on the licence. Basically:

You are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work
to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution —

You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Share Alike —

If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

You can attribute me by linking back to the flickr photo page or to http://bendalton.noii.net/

If you need a different, or more flexible licence, please send me a quote for your standard picture rates and requirements and I will be happy to consider.

Ben

Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen | Bergen National Academy of the Arts

Equal parts design, social critique, and play, exploring fundamental principles of computational design. A course by Amber Frid-Jimenez Associate Professor and Ben Dalton Visiting Professor.

globe.khib.no/remaprepeat

Frank Kidson was a co-founder of the Folk-Song Society.

Are icecream vans folk music? What other forms of folk music are catalogued in Chapeltown homes?

I like bread as a universal symbol for humanity. I think there is something bread-like in almost all cultures. My original thought on this was that bread should be the illustration on all Euro bank notes, with each country choosing bread examples for each denomination. ‘Bread’, ‘dough’ – get it.

Collecting recipes also seems a good way of documenting community.

Sculptures of fictional characters appeal to me.

The art piece I saw a while back comes to mind where the funding was spent to slightly sink some of the paving stones in a town to create a puddle when it rains. But the artist kept the location of the ‘art puddle’ a secret, so that every puddle was a contender. I can’t remember much about who made this. Anyone know?

I find it interesting how often ‘invasive species’ are described in terms of a particular country of origin – like the country is to blame. Japanese knotweed, Africanized killer bees, giant American toad, European green crab, Indian mongoose, Argentine ant, Dutch elm disease, Mozambique tilapia, English starling, West Indian stinging ant, etc.. Classic fear-based flood metaphors (normally seen in the pages of the Daily Mail describing immigration) are also often used to describe wildlife.

I consider myself part of one of many Chapeltown emigre communities.

The Brooklyn Mobile project from Dan Paluska is good. A straight-to-youtube recording device for use on the streets.

I like this idea of 3D printing residents of a location too “Honey I Shrunk the Red Hook” is a collaboration between Luis Blackaller and Andy Cavatorta.